In the contemporary world all kinds of culture, thought modes, philosophies and religions are complicatedly active. Social conditions of our contemporary world wear a nihilistic look which Nietzsche prophesied as a fact, 200 years after his time. In this nihilistic ambience, the whole world seems to be overrun by various crimes neglecting morality and ethics. In such a world we are urged to consider how morals and ethics can be realized. In this meaning the „bounds of ethics‟ are considered in (...) regard to the paradigms of different historical epochs as the framework and basis of life, culture and thinking. One of these paradigms, common to East and West, is the one based on being and nothingness: relative being, relative nothingness, absolute being, nihil, and absolute nothingness, which last-mentioned paradigm subsumes the other four. In essence, this paper will discuss how morality and ethics in the paradigm of absolute nothingness can finally act in oneness with religion and overcome nihilism in the contemporary world, even if it acts very slowly. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conference of the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesEiko Hanaoka and Jonathan A. SeitzFour lectures were given, with the theme “The Philosophy of Religion in Hajime Tanabe”:1. “Philosophy as Metanoetics” by Professor Masakazu Fujita2. “Hajime Tanabe’s Philosophy and Christian Dialectic” by Professor Emeritus Isao Onodera3. “‘Christianity’ and ‘Philosophy of Religion’ in Tanabe’s Philosophy” by Professor Emerita Eiko Hanaoka4. “The Original Subjectivity in Pure-Land Buddhism” by Professor Emeritus Akira Kawanami.Professor Emeritus (...) Ausluv Lande from Lund University in Sweden also participated in this conference. [End Page 193]Eiko HanaokaOsaka Prefecture UniversityPalace Side Hotel, Kyoto September 2–4, 2013Copyright © 2014 University of Hawai‘i Press... (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the new possibility of social transformation by religion in order to save the global nihilistic situation in the contemporary world because of the modern technology which neglected human dignity in all over the world since the Industrial Revolution started from England in the latter half of the 18th Century. Such possibility by religion can be realized, in my view, by “the way of walking” on the ground of “self-awareness”, where each person realizes the great death (...) of egoistic ego and is aware of the true self, which is common to each of all nature, which awareness then results in the faith in God as action, God who is non-substantial and has no peculiar nature of its own. Such religion could be found in the religion and the philosophy of religion advocated by A. N. Whitehead and K. Nishida. (shrink)